Sunday, May 10, 2009

The mother of all Mother's Day sports telecasts in Boston

I don’t know if this has ever happened before and I don’t have any easy way to research it but it may be the very reason God invented TiVo. For Boston fans anyway.

The Boston Red Sox, the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics are all playing tonight and all are on national television and all are starting at approximately the same time. If you’re Boston sports fan, you’re playing “Spin The Bottle” with the remote control. How can you split a TV screen three ways? This is the mother of all Mother’s Day sports telecasts in Beantown.

The Celtics are playing out of town, in Orlando, in Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals on TNT. Meanwhile, in Boston, the Bruins are hosting Carolina in Game 5 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinals on the Versus Network and, a half hour later, the Red Sox are at Fenway Park playing Tampa Bay in ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. And what are the odds that all three televised games would be in commercial at the same time, as was the case at the end of the first inning of the Red Sox game when the Bosox trailed the Rays 1-0, the Celtics were tied with the Magic 23-23 and the Bruins were ahead of the Hurricanes 2-0.

Imagine how the gang down at “Cheers” would handle this dilemma with only one TV set?